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Okay, I promised I wasn't going to bitch or whine in here about the archives for at least two months and I'm trying to be good. So instead of whining about things, let me just say that after a series of... ahem... colourful mails from an author concerning rejection letters and the contents thereof, I have some comments, observations and questions.
One of the things Leah and I find with the archive is that a lot of authors really struggle with punctuation, particularly the punctuation of speech and the failure to use full stops, leading to run on sentences. In fact, we found that these sorts of errors were so common that we sat down and wrote the 'Minimal Quality Guidelines' for Wraithbait, which set out the kinds of things we reject for so that authors could be forewarned.
It's still happening, and after it happened again last night, with associated... colourful e-mails, I started to wonder whether a) it was me, b) it was them or c) it was the state of teaching these days.
So in order to make sure it wasn't me, I asked around the office to double check my understanding of the correct way to punctuate speech (because I tend to doubt myself a lot :)) and not one of the six people I asked, all professionals and educated to near or graduate level, picked the answer I thought was right.
It made me doubt myself so much that it wasn't until another colleague pulled a novel out that she was reading at lunchtime to confirm that, yes, I was right, that I started to relax.
But it made me think rather hard about the whole 'grammar' thing and just how important readers of fanfiction find it. I know how important I think it is - very - but am I just weird and grammar obsessed? Also, while I think that grammar is important in the finished, 'published' work, I don't think that it's the only tool in the writer's box, and probably not the best tool for the job of actually writing a story. That takes that 'spark' of creativity, and in writing fanfiction it also takes a good eye for the characters and a good ear for their dialogue and the way they interact with each other, and the ability to reproduce that in a story.
I do think, however, that any writer who hasn't got a grasp of the technical aspects should get a beta reader who has that grasp to look at the story before posting. After all, while grammar can be learnt and it's more difficult to learn the other aspects of writing such as plotting, pacing and characterisation, errors in grammar are the easiest things for a competent beta reader to spot, point out and convince an author to change before posting.
At least that's my take on it :)
So I thought I'd conduct a poll to see what other people thought.
The poll is open to everyone, and I'm going to make this post public so anyone can take it. I am, however, going to keep the results private to me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I don't want people's responses to be influenced by what the majority answers are at any point in time, and secondly, I do know that not everyone has the same grasp of grammar, nor should they (see my point about beta readers above) and I don't think it's fair to make all those answers public.
In other words, I'm looking for honesty.
I'll leave it open a couple of weeks, and then I'll anonymise and summarise the results.
And it's guaranteed that this post will contain multiple spelling, punctuation and grammar errors :) Posts like this always do. Can I blame it on the fact that I'm bloody freezing and my fingers are like icicles?
Brrrrrr.
[ETA: The reason that I'm asking for whether your first language is English, American English etc is that it has been claimed that punctuation of speech differs - in fact, one of the 'colourful' e-mails was about how unfair it was to impose American English grammar rules on an English author. Sucked, then, that she had the story read and commented on by someone who's English. As opposed to the other non-US admin ::g:: So while I'm pretty damned sure that American grammar rules don't differ from English, Australian or Canadian on this point, I'm trying to confirm that :)]
[Poll #658517]
One of the things Leah and I find with the archive is that a lot of authors really struggle with punctuation, particularly the punctuation of speech and the failure to use full stops, leading to run on sentences. In fact, we found that these sorts of errors were so common that we sat down and wrote the 'Minimal Quality Guidelines' for Wraithbait, which set out the kinds of things we reject for so that authors could be forewarned.
It's still happening, and after it happened again last night, with associated... colourful e-mails, I started to wonder whether a) it was me, b) it was them or c) it was the state of teaching these days.
So in order to make sure it wasn't me, I asked around the office to double check my understanding of the correct way to punctuate speech (because I tend to doubt myself a lot :)) and not one of the six people I asked, all professionals and educated to near or graduate level, picked the answer I thought was right.
It made me doubt myself so much that it wasn't until another colleague pulled a novel out that she was reading at lunchtime to confirm that, yes, I was right, that I started to relax.
But it made me think rather hard about the whole 'grammar' thing and just how important readers of fanfiction find it. I know how important I think it is - very - but am I just weird and grammar obsessed? Also, while I think that grammar is important in the finished, 'published' work, I don't think that it's the only tool in the writer's box, and probably not the best tool for the job of actually writing a story. That takes that 'spark' of creativity, and in writing fanfiction it also takes a good eye for the characters and a good ear for their dialogue and the way they interact with each other, and the ability to reproduce that in a story.
I do think, however, that any writer who hasn't got a grasp of the technical aspects should get a beta reader who has that grasp to look at the story before posting. After all, while grammar can be learnt and it's more difficult to learn the other aspects of writing such as plotting, pacing and characterisation, errors in grammar are the easiest things for a competent beta reader to spot, point out and convince an author to change before posting.
At least that's my take on it :)
So I thought I'd conduct a poll to see what other people thought.
The poll is open to everyone, and I'm going to make this post public so anyone can take it. I am, however, going to keep the results private to me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I don't want people's responses to be influenced by what the majority answers are at any point in time, and secondly, I do know that not everyone has the same grasp of grammar, nor should they (see my point about beta readers above) and I don't think it's fair to make all those answers public.
In other words, I'm looking for honesty.
I'll leave it open a couple of weeks, and then I'll anonymise and summarise the results.
And it's guaranteed that this post will contain multiple spelling, punctuation and grammar errors :) Posts like this always do. Can I blame it on the fact that I'm bloody freezing and my fingers are like icicles?
Brrrrrr.
[ETA: The reason that I'm asking for whether your first language is English, American English etc is that it has been claimed that punctuation of speech differs - in fact, one of the 'colourful' e-mails was about how unfair it was to impose American English grammar rules on an English author. Sucked, then, that she had the story read and commented on by someone who's English. As opposed to the other non-US admin ::g:: So while I'm pretty damned sure that American grammar rules don't differ from English, Australian or Canadian on this point, I'm trying to confirm that :)]
[Poll #658517]
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